


Cages

by Overlithe



Series: Overlithe's avatar_500 ficlets [13]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Community: fanfic100, Dark, Gen, Immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlithe/pseuds/Overlithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three female characters and their respective cages. Written for prompt 25 (jail) of the avatar_500 LJ comm (it won 3rd place) and prompt 75 (shade) of the fanfic100 LJ comm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cages

**Author's Note:**

> _Warnings:_ References to violence in Hama’s segment

  
_Thanks again to[attackfish](http://attackfish.livejournal.com) at the [avatar_500](http://avatar_500.livejournal.com) comm for the awesome banner:_

  
****  
Cages   
  


 

When the moon died, Hama’s blood told her before she looked out the window and saw a sky as grey as—

_prison bars_

—ashes and a red circle hanging above the clouds like a bloodshot eye. The sun hadn’t finished setting; it still burned, bright and mocking. Around her, people half-rose from their seats, leaned towards the windows with a babble of whispers. Her fingernails dug into her palms until the skin broke and blood welled; it felt thin and colourless.

She wiped her hands, looked around the room feigning bewilderment. In a moment, she was sure, the whispers would turn into laughter. The eyes would grow hard and brittle with triumph.

It was worse when the chains came off. That meant they weren’t necessary to keep her in.

She thought of locked doors, barred windows; rags soaked in oil, waiting for a spark. The scent of charred flesh, sweet and sour.

Until now she had punished the guilty and spared the innocent.

Until now she had pretended some of them could be innocent.

 

:=:

In space, it is always terribly cold.

Yue can’t feel it, but ice covers the rocks that spin in the emptiness, twists into rings that glow soft gold, pale blue.

She is four, sticking her tongue out to catch snowflakes that melt in her eyelashes and taste like needlepricks. She is ageless—or sixteen, perhaps; she’s not sure—and a comet dips into the skies, a streak of blazing frost in its wake. Forests burn underneath it.

It is early summer. A different rock crashes to the ground. Sokka forges a sword out of it, the colour of the void between the stars. It is late summer, and the blade drops down to where the air is boiling and the fire burns nearly white.

She watches as the Avatar dies in a cloud of ash. She watches as she cleaves the earth in two. She watches as he saves the world, and fails to save it.

There is no past. There is no future. And neither saving the world nor failing to save it matters.

:=:

The heaviest things Toph Bei Fong ever had to lift were not made of stone. They hung off her shoulders with the sigh of silk, every stitch of embroidery settling in place like a link in a chain. Sometimes, when she was alone in the gardens, she’d run her fingertips over the bumpy pattern, as if some part of her needed to make sure it was just thread.

For a while, she asked her parents to let her go outside.

She stopped asking a long time ago.

Now she just waited. Made her way back into the caves, a path so familiar she would have found it with her feet covered. Dug her toes in the cool clay, buried her face in the badgermoles’ warm and musky fur. Jumped over sharp rocks, laughed loud enough to tear fabric. And when she moved, boulders rose in time with her, wonderfully light.

 

++The End++

**Author's Note:**

>  _Notes:_ If you liked the Yue segment, you may also enjoy my ficlet [Spirit-Bound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/178189) (you can also read it [here in my LJ](http://overlithe.livejournal.com/163900.html) or [here at ff.net](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6878935/1/Spirit_Bound) if you prefer).


End file.
